


Valse Sur Une Berceuse Anglaise

by alby_mangroves



Series: Yuletide Stories [6]
Category: Crimson Peak (2015)
Genre: Alternate Canon, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Cunnilingus, F/F, F/M, First Kiss, Happy Ending, Multi, Polyamory Negotiations, Relationship Negotiation, Sibling Incest, Victorian Attitudes, Yuleporn, Yuletide 2015
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-25
Updated: 2015-12-25
Packaged: 2018-05-08 15:44:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5503457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alby_mangroves/pseuds/alby_mangroves
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The throng of Buffalo's society parts like the red sea, yielding the floor to Thomas and the young woman on his arm, and Lucille knows it immediately: they have chosen poorly.</p><p>They ought to have started in London, or Edinburgh, or even Milan. Anywhere but here.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Valse Sur Une Berceuse Anglaise

**Author's Note:**

  * For [airspaniel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/airspaniel/gifts).



> Huge thanks to my dear Violette-Royale and Emjayelle for their wonderful beta and support ♥
> 
> Click to listen to the lovely [Valse Sur Une Berceuse Anglaise](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2NmP7oR_0w).

~ ♛ ♕ ♚ ~

It was not meant to happen like this.

Lucille looks up when the hushed whispers begin immediately after her performance. The throng of Buffalo’s society parts like the red sea, yielding the floor to Thomas and the young woman on his arm, and Lucille knows it immediately: they have chosen poorly.

They ought to have started in London, or Edinburgh, or even Milan. Anywhere but here.

The first words they exchange are unremarkable, but nothing will bleach the sound of Edith Cushing’s voice from Lucille’s mind now that she has heard it. Nothing will erase the image of her white shoulders, unveiled like marble from beneath her silk cape. Light from the chandeliers spins gold in her hair.

Lucille and Thomas had done their research; they’d armed themselves with facts: the nett value of Mr Cushing, the manner of his careful business practices, his assets, including - most crucially - an unmarried daughter. There was nothing among those facts to explain the sudden heat in Lucille’s face at a shy smile, nothing to give reason to the sudden bay of hunger for the pink lips which deliver it.

Thomas looks down at Edith like she is a bird of paradise perched on his arm. It is clear he feels something too, Lucille is well versed in the language of his eyes and his touches.

Edith takes his elbow, curls her fingers over his forearm. Lucille catalogues it all and processes none of it. She is so aware of the two of them waltzing behind her while she plays the piano that she can barely keep track of her own fingers; only years of practice save her.

It had been a good plan.

~ ♛ ♕ ♚ ~

Lucille feels Edith’s approach like cold fingers walking up the knobs of her spine. Edith’s soft, cream gown sways ever closer on the periphery of Lucille’s vision but she steadies her breath and does not turn to look.

“Is it a butterfly?”

Edith comes to stand close enough for the silk of their skirts to brush together. Lucille’s hands are trembling as she snips off a cocoon. She wants Edith to go away. She wants Edith to link their arms and hold Lucille’s elbow the way she held Thomas’. She wants to tear at Edith’s pretty hair and push her away. She wants to hold Edith close and nose behind her ear.

Edith’s nearness is maddening. Disconcerting. Lucille takes a sharp, deep breath.

“No. But it will be soon,” she says, as the two of them sink down to the ground side by side, skirts whooshing and billowing out. Lucille buries a hand in the earth to steady herself, butterfly bodies strewn about her in droves, wings fluttering weakly in the breeze. “They’re dying. They take their heat from the sun, and when it—”

She cannot finish. The words stick in her throat. Edith looks at her with some considerable concern etched into her face and Lucille can’t stand herself, can’t for a moment longer keep up this placid charade.

“Are you quite all right?” Edith asks, and covers Lucille’s hand with her own, fine cream kidskin over black. Her eyes are so dark. Under the oak’s shade, they’re near black. Edith’s thumb makes a slow pass over Lucille’s knuckles, once, twice.

Lucille nods, unable to speak, confused and upset and unable to parse precisely why.

“Please excuse me, Miss Cushing, I feel rather unwell,” she finally manages to say before snatching her hand back and stumbling to her feet.

Thomas, Edith’s manuscript tucked under his arm, makes as though to come to her but she waves away his concern. The heels of her shoes sink into the soft earth as she walks away, leaving Edith kneeling in the butterfly graveyard.

At the park’s exit, she looks back to see Edith sitting as she left her, and Thomas, her own beautiful brother, dark and still, standing by her like a sentinel.

~ ♛ ♕ ♚ ~

Edith takes many walks. She walks everywhere: to the library, to her father’s offices, to nowhere at all, simply for the pleasure of it. Lucille loves it. There is nowhere to walk to at Allerdale Hall, and the difference it makes to her constitution is astounding.

She never knew it could be like this, the delightful simplicity of stretching her legs and taking the air. Edith confounds her and fascinates her and the whole ordeal of spending time outdoors in her company leaves Lucille pleasantly exhausted. Thomas is feeling it too; he has become contemplative as they take turns in escorting Edith about town.

Then there is the small matter of Edith’s hand resting in the crook of Lucille's elbow, brushing lightly against her bodice as they walk arm in arm.

“I have never walked so much in all my life as I have in these past few days,” she says under her breath.

“Truly? Oh, but I could not live without this,” Edith says, throwing out her hand as if to hug the whole world. “You do not enjoy it?”

“Oh, it’s not that,” Lucille says with a small smile for Edith, “I have enjoyed it very much.” She dares to give Edith’s arm a little tug, brushing their shoulders together, and is rewarded with a smile that makes her heart beat faster.

“We are too far removed from the city. The moors stretch for miles in any direction and the closest village is an hour’s ride. Hardly worth the effort.”

“Oh but surely you have land surrounding the manor? Thomas tells me it is a very grand old house, if in some considerable disrepair.”

“The property is expansive, to be sure.”

“But then why not simply—”

“The red clay we mine on the property,” Lucille says, conflicted. Edith might hate the sound of Allerdale Hall and not be drawn to come away with them. Equally dreadful is the possibility that she will. Their plan has never seemed so far away. Lucille tips her chin up and presses on. “It makes the land barren. Nothing will grow on it because the clay is so close to the surface. Our father and his father before him, Sharpes going back many generations have mined that land without much regard for aesthetic value. There is much danger in unsafe ground if one does not know where to step. Not really conducive to taking leisurely strolls about the gardens where none exist.”

“I admit it sounds a little harsh,” Edith says carefully.

Lucille hums. “When snow falls, the clay stains it red. The locals from the village nearby like to call it Crimson Peak.”

It takes Lucille a moment to realise Edith’s arm has slipped out from hers; she has stopped dead in her tracks.

“What is it?”

“Crimson Peak,” Edith says, her face waxy and paling.

“Yes, because of the red— Edith, what’s the matter?”

“You must not go back there,” Edith blurts out, flushing at the rudeness of her own words the moment they are out of her mouth, but she does not take them back.

“Allerdale Hall is our home,” Lucille says, perplexed.

“Please Lucille, you cannot go back. I have a horrible feeling about it.” There is utmost gravity in Edith’s voice, and such worry lurking in her eyes, whether it’s for the thing she has sensed, or whether it is because she thinks Lucille will laugh off her warning. Lucille has the dawning realisation that much is riding on her response. She chooses her words with care.

“It is the only home Thomas and I have ever known,” Lucille says. “Sometimes I feel so overwhelmed with the world that I long for the security of it, for how remote we are there. And sometimes I wake from a dream where I never have need to go back at all.”

Edith takes Lucille’s hands for a fleeting moment, her brittle smile failing to brighten her face.

It should be nothing more than a benign gesture between friends, but the people passing them on the street cannot see Lucille’s secret desires unfolding silky hot in her mind every time Edith so much as looks at her. They cannot feel the rush of blood past her ears or the warmth blooming deep in her belly.

They resume their walk, but the ease between them is gone.

~ ♛ ♕ ♚ ~

She is expecting Thomas to be asleep already but when she finally comes to bed, she can hear it in the cadence of his breathing: he is still awake.

“I fear I have ruined everything,” Lucille says, pressing her face into the hollow of Thomas' throat, his steady pulse ever an anchor.

“Oh, Lucy,” Thomas says, sighing into her hair. “Here you were, ready to share me, when it seems I must learn to share you, instead.”

“It’s impossible. She isn’t. She wouldn’t.”

There aren’t words to describe the wretchedness in Lucille’s heart. In the end, Thomas simply holds her, stroking her hair to a smooth waterfall.

~ ♛ ♕ ♚ ~

Lucille cannot shake the disquiet all of the following day, no matter how Thomas attempts to divert her. She finally resorts to the correspondence which requires their attention, sitting down in the evening by the glow of the lamp.

It isn’t until Thomas crawls beneath the desk that she truly notices him.

“Can you imagine what it might be like?” He hitches up the hem of her skirt and kisses her knee. Ever helpless against his clever advances, Lucille sinks lower into her chair.

“I see the way you look at her,” he continues, relentless, working his way under her skirts to mouth at the inside of her thigh until Lucille can’t help the gasp, can’t help how her legs drift open for him.

“This is what you want, isn’t it? This is your mouth,” he says, smothering the words on her skin while pressing kisses to her thigh, “and lovely Edith just like you are now, spreading her legs for you.”

Lucille squeezes her eyes tightly shut, her mouth falling open. He knows her so well, her darling, her brother. “Yes,” she moans, when he shoulders his way in between her legs, spreading her good and open. His breath ghosts where she is pulsing and hot for him, for Edith, voice reedy with want.

Thomas pulls at the string of her drawers, spreads the fabric to each side, so delicate, and puts his mouth on her. Lucille smothers a shout against her hand.

“That beautiful hair unpinned on your pillow,” he says, his voice muffled by the weight of her skirts. Kiss, nibble, kiss. When he slides a finger inside her, she curses like the servants do. Thomas laughs darkly against her mound and gives her another.

“I wonder if you would make a long feast of her, have her like this for hours” he whispers, kissing her cunt deeply, the same way he kisses her mouth, slow and wet and moaning low in his throat. Lucille cannot _think_ , images of Edith bright beneath her eyelids, sensations colliding to send her towards release.

“Or would your hunger for her make you impatient, make you fuck her like this,” he says, pushing his long fingers into her, fast, hard, “have her bursting her flavour on your tongue?”

Thomas laps and sucks at her in time with his fingers and it’s upon her so quickly that all Lucille can do is wail at the ceiling and take it while he reduces her to a boneless mess in her chair, hardly coherent when he gets her legs up so he can slide inside. The crushed silk of her gown rustles between them.

“Do you think she might like to have my cock and your mouth at the same time?” Thomas pants into her neck, near brutish in his enthusiasm for the tender flesh still pulsing within her. Lucille’s eyes roll back in her head. She digs her fingers into his shoulders, her heels into his buttocks and holds on, letting Thomas take her, take them both away on the pleasure of an impossible dream.

~ ♛ ♕ ♚ ~

They are not expecting anyone, and it is too late for casual visitors, but the knocking will not cease. They look at each other in silence: Thomas stretched out on the divan, reading, Lucille in a chair next to him, darning a popped seam in her gown. Without a word, Thomas disappears into the bedroom.

Lucille opens the door to find Edith in the hall. Edith smiles winningly, but her eyes look nervous, darting from Lucille’s face, to her hands and back again.

“I am not certain why I’m here,” Edith says, a wild look in her eyes as though she has fought with herself the whole way there.

Wordlessly, Lucille steps aside to let her enter, pressing a hand to her stomach to quell a sudden tremor.

“Forgive me for coming so late.” Edith is uncharacteristically scattered and Lucille is growing more anxious by the moment.

“It is not so late as that,” she says, unprepared for Edith to suddenly turn until they are facing each other and within arms’ reach.

“May I speak plainly?” Edith has an unusual complexion: such dark eyes at odds with her warm honey hair and blush-pink skin. Twin spots of high colour appear on the apples of her cheeks.

“Of course.”

“I do not know how to say it, so I’m just going to say it. That is. I’m.” Edith shakes her head, huffing a small, anguished laugh. She tugs at the fingers of her glove and bares her hand. Slowly she takes Lucille’s fingers to twine with her own, chilly from the cold outside.

“I feel we may be cut from the same cloth,” Edith says, clearly struggling, a deep crease in her brow. “I feel a connection between us, and I am. I only hope that you. Do you see me, Lucille?” Edith’s face is naked in its exposure. She is laying herself open, so bold. Braver than Lucille could ever be.

“Oh, Edith.” Lucille’s heart flutters wildly. She cannot believe this is happening. Before she can voice her thoughts, Edith steps away, retrieving her hand, mistaking Lucille’s shock for rejection.

“I am so terribly sorry. I see you as you are, intelligent, so elegant, as yet unmarried, and I thought perhaps I read something in your look and in your disposition towards me—”

“Yes,” Lucille says, eyes fixed on Edith’s parted mouth, already leaning in. The kiss is gentle, a chaste press to the corner of Edith’s mouth.

“Oh,” Edith says, eyes round and big as Lucille pulls away. “Then, may I…” She returns Lucille’s kiss and lingers there, both of them smiling into it.

When Edith unpins her hat, a lock of hair tumbles down. Lucille winds it around her finger and tucks it behind a pin, then allows her fingers to skate over the pink shell of Edith’s ear and down to caress the frill of her collar.

Lucille follows the ruffle down and down until her fingertips are resting over a neat row of silky buttons at Edith’s throat.

“Lucille,” Edith whispers.

Her mouth is so soft, yielding in one instance and insistent in another, and Lucille is utterly besotted with it, with Edith herself. Lucille spreads her hands over the small of Edith’s back and pulls her close.

Thomas is watching, she can feel it. When she opens her eyes to look over Edith's shoulder, he smiles at her through the sliver of the open bedroom door, then quietly slips away into darkness. Lucille closes her eyes and abandons herself into Edith’s warm keep.

~ ♛ ♕ ♚ ~

They continue their daily walks, Lucille and Thomas both: to the park, to the museum, to all the galleries of Buffalo. Edith is smart - Lucille knew this already, but she is eloquent and interesting and Lucille cannot get enough of her. Thomas is equally smitten.

They speak of the book she is writing, of the difficulties of trying to sell herself as a serious author. It is intolerable and perplexing that everyone else does not look at Edith and see her brilliant mind, her quick wit. Lucille wants to strike down anyone who has ever told Edith no because she wears a dress.

She is curious about Lucille, about Thomas, about the house and their childhood within it. She looks at Lucille with the same undivided attention as Thomas always has. They walk arm in arm, secretly caressing each other’s gloved hands, and Lucille develops a near permanent flush which she blames on all the fresh air.

Thomas comes as well, watching it all unfold, gracious and quiet, letting Lucille find her footing. His temperance reminds her of how much she adores him, how generous he can be, and how much they have done for each other.

He takes Edith riding and when they return, their laughter makes Lucille’s fond heart swell up into her throat. They’re so beautiful together it hurts to look at them.

Lucille cannot bear to think about what the two of them planned to do once they had Edith back at Allerdale Hall.

In the evenings, the three of them play cards and amuse each other with good conversation, and the feeling that each of them is hiding a secret sits quietly in the corner where none of them need look too closely.

Until.

~ ♛ ♕ ♚ ~

Edith’s hair spills out of a messy bun to lie in tendrils over her pillow, late afternoon sun slanting in to catch the gold of it. Thomas will be by shortly. They ought to rise and straighten themselves up for supper.

“Don’t go back,” Edith says.

“I’m afraid we must, for now at least. Our funds are depleted.” Lucille laughs darkly, the failure of their plan complete. “We must continue to court investors in the mine, else we will sink into the clay along with the house.”

“What if I told you that you need not go back, nor to worry about money? Would you still care for the mine?”

“Not a whit,” Lucille breathes, kissing Edith’s jaw, her chin, her mouth. “This is a lovely dream.”

"Oh no, my darling, there is no need to dream. I have my own money, you see. You need not go back. You can stay with me, Lucy. We can be together."

Lucille cannot help it, the laugh simply bubbles up out of her. “And what of Thomas? You would have me abandon my brother to his fate?”

“I will marry him,” Edith says, then looks shocked at herself. She swallows hard. “I will marry Thomas, and we can go away together, the three of us, we can find a new home somewhere nobody knows us. We can live together, all three of us. And if Thomas wishes to return to the house and continue the mining operation, I will help fund it.”

Lucille knows she is staring, yet cannot seem to stop. “How will you do this?”

"My mother," Edith says quietly. "She was the heiress, not father. She married for love. Mother sponsored Father's business and he made his own fortune but it was my mother's money that started him on that path. When she fell ill, it was made certain in her testament that she left everything she had to me."

Lucille’s heart beats itself against her ribs like a moth against the glass of a lantern. She must tell Edith, now or never. She must.

“I will not leave Thomas, nor will he leave me. We are lovers. We have been for years.” she says, her voice thick with emotion, choking on the words, voiced in the open for the very first time, and never with more to lose.

Edith stares at her with huge eyes. When she falls back to the bed in throes of helpless laughter, Lucille has time only to think,  _it is over,_ before Edith rises up on an elbow to kiss her face all over, giggling like mad.

“And here I was,” she murmurs finally against Lucille’s mouth, “torturing myself with guilt over having to choose between you.”

~ ♛ ♕ ♚ ~

Thomas is susceptible to freckles. Lucille had no idea, but the Mediterranean sun has taught them all that Thomas simply cannot stay in the sun for longer than a few minutes at a time. There will be no forgetting his pain at the ensuing sunburn.

The sun adores Edith, just as Thomas and Lucille adore her. She turns golden under its attentions, her hair glowing just as the candlelight promised that very first evening.

She is more shy to share her words than her body, but once that vein is tapped, they are spoiled for choice to read the wonderful things her mind creates, her hand elegant and compelling. She is quick-witted, curious and intrepid, and she confounds them both. She is the sweetest thing Lucille has ever tasted.

At night, they all lie together and talk well into the night, and touch and kiss, and laugh. They have discovered new ways to reduce each other to a quivering mess when two mouths and four hands are applied, and all take pride in this painstaking work. The most difficult thing is to keep their joy discreet, to dance their perfect three-beat waltz within the confines of their rooms.

Mother’s garnet lies forgotten at the bottom of Lucille’s travelling case which boasts tags from Cairo, Paris and Florence - accompanying her brother and his pretty bride on their honeymoon has not been a hardship. Lucille has never known anything quite like this immense sense of peace.

She has become a new person, someone who looks forward to not looking back.

~ ♛ ♕ ♚ ~


End file.
